Ford World Women's Championship – FINALS

Germany beat Scotland by 8-6 in the extra end to become gold medal winners of the Ford World Women’s Curling Championship 2010 in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, Canada.

German skip Andrea Schoepp ended the longest title drought in the history of the women’s championship. The previous time Germany won was in Glasgow in 1988 – Schoepp and her second Monika Wagner were part of that team.

This World crown, over a Scotland team skipped by nineteen-year-old Eve Muirhead, goes alongside the European title Schoepp and her team won in Aberdeen in December 2009.

The final was tight all the way as the Scots fought hard, and the lead changed hands five times. Muirhead produced the shot of the game with her second in the tenth when she scored one with a brave multiple take-out to push the game into an extra end after suffering an untimely pick-up on her first stone.

Germany kept control of the extra end and eventually Schoepp had a take-out and stay to score the two points for her second world gold medal.

Afterwards, Schoepp said, “It feels great. We had a really good game and I think the girls have done such a good job this week”.

Asked about her line-up this year she said, “you never know what the right team is, you just have the players you have. We had our problems during the last two years but with Monika (Wagner) playing on second, it is perfect. She really did great”.

Looking to the future, she said, “I hope we can win it again, but the Teams are always so close together”. She also had a thought for her opponent. “Eve will be the future. She is a really good player. She is the future, like the Swedish team”.

Disappointed Scottish skip Eve Muirhead also spoke. She said, “You’re definitely disappointed. They played a fantastic game out there. Andrea’s on-form and you can’t doubt that. We gave them a good run. We’ve still got a silver medal but we went out there to win the game and it didn’t happen”.

Speaking about her pick-up, she said, “It’s gutting that it ended like that. There’s nothing you can do about that. I think it was the only pick of the week, which was fate. Unfortunately it comes down to these things”.

More generally, she added, “I can’t be too hard on myself. I’ve hopefully got a long way to go. There’s so much I can take out of this, especially being at a Worlds in Canada, the atmosphere was phenomenal”.

Earlier, Canada’s Jennifer Jones, who had topped the round-robin, had the consolation of beating Sweden’s Cecilia Ostlund by 9-6 to take bronze. She had single steals in the third and fourth ends before scoring a four in the sixth to set up her win when she ran Sweden out of stones in the tenth.

Afterwards, Jones said, “that was a nice way to finish off the week. This team is a play-off team. I think that’s one thing that we’ve learned how to do. Now, we’ve finally figured out the round-robin, so maybe we can stick those together next time. We’re pretty happy with how we played”.